Its been raining on and off the whole week (actually the whole month), so I haven’t really been able to do much to the garden. Originally I had wanted to mow the lawn and add the grass clippings to the soil, but because the grass was too wet, I couldn’t do it.

Regardless of the weather, I really really wanted to plant the tree in. Luckily it was just overcast today, so I managed to finish everything off more or less.

During the digging and the planting process, I realised that I didn’t have enough soil. So I went to buy more soil.. afterwards when I got home, my mom asked me how many mondo grass plants I had, and I told her that I bought 5. She told me to buy another one because 6 is a better number than 5. So I’ll do that tomorrow on my way back from work. If only I asked before I went to get the soil.. that would have saved me from going again tomorrow.

To be honest, the area I chose to make this garden isn’t exactly ideal. There isn’t much soil, and it’s all rock underneath. But then again, I didn’t want the tree to grow too tall.. so in someways it works out well for me. It just probably won’t be a very healthy tree since the roots won’t go very deep. I guess we’ll find out in a few years lol..

So yeah, the garden is more of less finished. Just have to collect more rocks and stones to build my rock wall, and to also move the giant rock to the back corner. Its too heavy for me to lift myself.. So I’ll have to wait till someone can help me. Or I might decide to plant something else there..

wow! its been over 2 years since I’ve posted something.. I’m such a bum.

anyways.. I’m going to try it again. I’ve recently gotten into a gardening mood and thought it’ll be a good idea to keep track of the whole process.

I’ve got a big backyard behind the house. But I’m only allow to use a small area of it..

as you can see, its only about 3 meters by 3 meters at most.. so its not a very big area. By the way.. all that was a grassy area. I spent a couple of days digging it up over and over again to make sure the weeds are dead.

I’ve got the mini garden all planned out.. In my mind it looks nice enough, so hopefully the finished product will be decent enough.

So yeah, that’s the plan with the middle circle being the Japanese Maple tree that I bought yesterday. The tree is about 1 meter tall at the moment. I don’t want it to grow too tall because just over the fence is where my neighbours hang their laundry, so I don’t want the tree to be tall to the point that it’ll block the sun on their side. I’ll have to do some reading up on how to prune the tree so it looks nice without killing it lol..

All this gardening stuff started a couple of weeks ago when I took my bonsais for a service/check up. I bought the bonsais about a year ago. Out of the three, I’ve killed one, got one infected with a disease and the cherry blossom I managed to keep alive and blooming. The infected plant (the middle one, a juniper) is being treated now whereas the serissa (the first one, which I killed) I asked to get replaced with another Japanese maple. So whilst I was at the nursery, I thought.. I really want to plant one of these bonsais and watch it grow… From that, I just started looking up photos of small gardens, trying to get some inspiration. All I’ve got to do now is go to the nursery to buy everything.. and fingers cross, if the weather holds up I’ll be able to plant the flower seeds next weekend.

These were my bonsais about 6 months ago.. They look a lot different now.. I’ll post up photos when I get them back from the nursery.

My cousin, aunt and uncle came over from the States last week for a short holiday, mainly to visit my grandmother. The trip for my cousin was quite unexpected, so she didn’t really have anything in particular that she wanted to do other than climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. So yesterday morning we caught the train out and made our way to the bridge. All I can say is the experience was pretty awesome. The weather was perfect and we had clear views across the city. The climb up and down was a bit scary though.. I’m afraid of heights, and the beginning plus the end of the climb had a set of extremely steep stairs (81 degrees). It just felt really exposed. I was grabbing onto the rails for dear life even though I knew I was perfectly safe.. It was only when I was on the arch of the bridge that I began to relax and feel comfortable. (I didn’t want that part to end lol… ending meant having to go down the stairs.) It was fun being able to stand at the top and just point out different parts of the city, ‘Grandma lives over that direction… I live over there… I used to go canoeing down over there… that’s where you’ll be going later after we get back down etc etc..’.

So yeah, I had a great day.. and it’s nice to have done something like that before I left the country.

That’s my awesome awesome cousin. Not sure how she feels about her photo being shown on the internets, thus the blurring…

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

This post is something of a journal entry/getting my thoughts out/justifying to myself etc etc.. It quite personal, but I don’t have that many readers so I’m not too fussed about revealing too much or whatnot.

Anyway… Sometimes I feel as if I’ve messed up my life. No, scratch that.. I know I have. Under-achieving, disappointment, failure.. all those words can be used to describe me. I never worked hard at my studies. Lazy and unmotivated, I always took things as they came. I never really gave my future much thought. I didn’t get really good marks for my uni entrance exams, so I ended up starting with B. Social Science (don’t ask me what this is, I have no idea), then I transferred to do B. Arts. majoring in international business and Chinese. I never enjoyed going to uni and in hindsight, I don’t think I was suited to go. I struggled the first few years of uni, continually failing subject after subject. My mom kept on asking “When are you graduating?”, and I could never give her a definite answer. Finally I got suspended from uni. I couldn’t go back for a year.. so what did I end up doing? More study!! Stupid eh? but what else could I do? So I spent the next three and a half years trying to study accounting at a different uni. Got suspended from that as well because once again, studying was not my thing and numbers was definitely not my thing. After that I went back to the first uni and asked them to let me back in.. thankfully they did. I didn’t want to go back, but my mom wanted me to get my degree, and many people I spoke with also said that I might as well finish it off. I only had a years worth of subjects to go, but that ended up taking me two years to finish. So after ten years of “studying” I finally got my degree.. But what can I do with an Arts degree?? It’s quite difficult to find a job with such a general degree. For the last couple of years I’ve been working really shitty jobs part-time whilst studying. Currently I’m bouncing from place to place as a temp-staff.. Not much job security, but I have no choice.

So back in January when I was unemployed, I began looking at doing internships, particularly ones in China. Reason for this is because I just want to get out of here. Home life is so stifling.. (it really doesn’t help that my mom constantly reminds me that I need to get a boyfriend and get married right now!! since I’m at that age where if I don’t get hitched in a couple of years, I’ll become spinster etc etc). The other reason is because I wanted some work experience in a proper company… something that actually looks decent on the resume. I ended up applying for two internships. The first one said ‘thanks but no thanks’. The second one contacted me almost two months later asking if I was still interested. I wrote back saying yes but I couldn’t come immediately due to various reasons. That probably put them off since I didn’t hear back from them. A month later I got another email from a different person at the same company asking me if I was interested and when I could come. I told them I could come immediately. A few emails and a phone call later, I was offered the internship (in the Human Resources department at a big Chinese company).

Sometimes I feel like that picture above, where the train has gone and left without me. Everyone around me has become successful at what they do.. all my friends are either getting married or soon to be…they own property or are considering buying. Here I am still nothing. I am at an age where most people are stable in their chosen fields, but I am just starting out in what I hope may become a career. I’ve wasted so much of my life…

So in under three weeks, I’ll be flying out.. pretty much starting a new life in a new city. I really really hope it works out. Most people have been supportive of my decision to go. Some people were like’WTF??! There is no money in this!!..why are you wasting your time doing this?!’.. The way I saw this was, if I stay here I would have gone from one mundane job to another.. there was no future here for me. By taking this chance to go over to China, if I try and work hard enough, there will be opportunities for me to become something. I didn’t want to look back and say ‘what if?’… By doing this, I will grow up, become an adult, independent and maybe I will finally feel better about myself. My self-esteem right now is pretty low because of the constant reminders from everyone about how much I have under-achieved. Year after year after year of nosy asian parents asking my mom ‘Has your daughter graduated yet?’.. After a while it just became easier for my mom to lie and say ‘yes, she has graduated’.. After that people started asking ‘What is your daughter doing now?’.. That answer also became a lie.. It was embarrassing to tell people what I really did, even I couldn’t bring myself to tell people, so we just said ‘office admin’.. which I did end up doing for a while. Why are asian parents so nosy?

So yeah, this internship will be for eight months and hopefully I can land a job at the end of it as well. Fingers crossed…